Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing

Conventional scholarship on written communication positions the Western alphabet as a precondition for literacy. Thus, pictographic, non-verbal writing practices of Mesoamerica remain obscured by representations of lettered speech. This book examines how contemporary Mestiz@ scripts challenge alphabetic dominance, thereby undermining the colonized territories of " writing. " Strategic weavings of Aztec and European inscription systems not only promote historically-grounded accounts of how recorded information is expressed across cultures, but also speak to emerging studies on " visual/multimodal" education. Baca-Espinosa argues that Mestiz@ literacies advance " new" ways of reading and writing, applicable to diverse classrooms of the twenty-first century.

Damián Baca-Espinosa is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing, Chicano-Latino Studies, and American Indian Studies at Michigan State University. He earned his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2006.